On Friday 22nd July I was leaving Estonia to fly from Tallinn to London. At Tallinn airport I was stopped at passport control and told I had overstayed my visa for the Schengen zone by 3 days. I was given a prohibition on entry for 3 years for the Schengen zone, as well as a penalty payment. For your information please find a scanned copy of the documents I received at the airport from the Immigration Police.

I am currently on extended holiday and had spent 3 months travelling in Italy, Germany, Sweden & Estonia, all Schengen zone countries.

I made a mistake in calculating the time allowed in the Schengen zone. I mistakenly believed I was allowed to stay for 3 months, rather than 90 days. I had not intended to overstay my visa, and it was clearly not my intention to be staying illegally in Estonia or the Schengen zone.

I am writing to request that my Prohibition on Entry be revoked. I believe this is a reasonable request for the following reasons:

- I clearly did not intend to overstay my visa as I was leaving the Schengen zone when I was stopped at the airport. My prearranged flight to the UK demonstrates that I had made arrangements to leave Estonia at the end of my Schengen visa and was planning to continue my holiday in other countries. I made a mistake but did not deliberately overstay my visa.- I made a miscalculation in the period of time I was allowed to stay in the Schengen zone. This error resulted in an overstay of only 3 days which is a relatively short period of time.

I apologise for breaching the terms of my Schengen visa. It was not my aim to do so, and I will most definitely never do this again.

Given the minor nature of my overstaying of the Schengen visa, and the fact that it was unintentional, I hope that it is possible to have my Prohibition on Entry revoked. I ask that you will consider this request.

Please let me know if any further information is necessary.

Yours sincerely,AW

Some times things just don't go to plan.......

So it's Friday the 22nd July 2011, and it's the end of our third month in Europe. Time has gone just a little too quickly and today is the day Alex needs to fly out of the Schengen Zone (most European countries except the UK & Ireland), her three month visa is finished. Our plan was simple enough, book a return flight to London.....exit the Shengen zone on the Australian Passport and re-enter on the NZ passport thereby allowing another three months of travel before having to do the same again and swap back to the Aussie passport.

We have some lunch together at the shopping centre near the airport and then say goodbye..........we've barely spent an hour apart in 9 months, let alone 2 nights, and it's a little hard to bid farewell, but we'll see each other again on Sunday night so really it's not so bad. In the midst of goodbyes I decide we should take some cash from the ATM. In Estonia you really need to concentrate at the ATM, for some strange reason the cash comes first, then the receipt and then the card, this is contrary to most other countries where the cash (the reason you are at the ATM) comes last......this way you cannot forget your card.......well I took the cash and walked away......Goodbye Card. Anyway I had enough cash and Alex, the holder of the other card will be back in a couple of days.........

I arrive back to our home (home for the time being) a little anxious to check our bank account, it's OK, everything is still there and I manage to remove all the money from the account and cancel the card, a new one is only 2 weeks away!!

After fixing the bank issues, I check my mail and in my inbox there are 2 new emails, the first is from the agent managing our apartment. She reports that the weather has been abysmal in Sydney, our window is leaking badly in the spare room, she tells us that 10 litres of water per night is pouring through the window and the tenants are understandably not very happy......the issue was supposedly fixed weeks ago however we discover that nothing was done........

Well, I guess in the scheme of things a lost card and a leak in our apartment is not so bad, these things can be managed........but the second email brings news that is far more distressing.......My Alex is in London and she ain't coming back......

So bad things come in threes, and I didn't have any more bad news on what I now refer to as Black Friday. We got as much advice as we could about Alex's situation and although it took almost 3 weeks to get an answer her ban was thankfully lifted. In the meantime I went on a cycling tour of Estonia by myself and Alex spent some time hanging out in London (thank you Simon & Vanessa!). I'm also starting to worry about the mayhem she causes wherever she goes - riots seem to break out in almost every country she visits or plans to visit - perhaps it's not a coincidence....?